With only one chance to land the 99-ton glider safely, Young eases the billion
dollar Columbia toward a 215-mile-an -hour rendezvous with the Mojave Desert
floor. Swooping under the shuttle in a T-38 chase plane, fellow astronauts Jon
McBride and George Nelson inspect its tiled bottom for damage. In fact, Columbia
had slipped through the atmosphere so smoothly half an hour earlier-asit dived
into thefirst molecules of air76 miles above the Pacific-thatin places it was 600°F
490
NationalGeographic, October 1981